One for you
by tant-gredelin
Summary: Renji and Rukia are gone and Ichigo, seventeen months after he last saw them, is still a mess. Love hurts. RenIchi


**Spoilers for chapter 424 of Bleach. Also there's a good amount of angst. BE WARNED ;D**

(Also, hi gais, it's been a while, huh. Have some fic soaked in my bitterness when it comes to the mess Bleach has become. Love you all! xoxo)

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"I know you're not there," Ichigo mumbled, sitting cross-legged on his bed while studying his hands like they didn't belong to him as they undid his belt and fly, "but you _could_ be. Could be sitting right there smack in the middle of the floor like you—" He stiffened, let his hands fall to his sides and grab handfuls of the Quincy bedspread. "Damnit."

_Like you used to._

Ichigo shoved that thought to the side and stared up at his ceiling, his arousal blown away in the blink of an eye.

As if Rukia—the one person who understood him better than _anyone _in this world, as well as the next—wasn't enough, Renji had disappeared too. Not a word from either of them in seventeen months. After all they'd been through together. Not _one _word.

"I hate you." Ichigo only breathed the words and still they burned his tongue. "I hate you," he said, a little louder to see how much they hurt then, and he could feel the burn slither from his tongue down his throat, making a lump form in it. "I _hate you!_" Ichigo didn't so much raise his voice as roar in the quiet of his room. Now his chest burned. And his eyes. He scrunched them shut and felt all but five years old again—a kid throwing a tantrum because someone took away his favorite toy. "Real mature, Kurosaki. Real fucking mature…" This time it was a sob.

Ichigo dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed hard enough for sparks to go off behind the lids, disgusted with himself when his palms came away wet. He refused to let more sobs slip, clenched his teeth so hard his jaw popped.

It just wasn't fair.

Just like that, he'd lost his purpose in life and along with it two people who meant more to him than was possible to explain in mere words. He couldn't help anymore, couldn't protect anyone, couldn't get smacked out of sulks, couldn't sleep safe wrapped in strong arms, couldn't _fuck_.

Jerking off didn't come close—of course it didn't—but doing it hadn't even given him simple release the first couple of months after he'd lost his powers; his thoughts had only strayed to Renji and with that a vicious ache had set in, twisting his guts into knots and making him lose all will to continue.

He'd changed methods after that, stubbornly thinking of _nothing_ while touching himself, only allowing himself to experience the physical sensation of his hand moving on his cock and when Ichigo had to, he was damn good at focusing on what needed to be done and nothing else. He'd sort of gotten the hang of that after meditating for three months straight. So there had been a period when Ichigo had gotten physical release, at least. After a few months there had even been a handful of times when he'd let his thoughts stray to actual persons, imagined their hands all over him and their mouths on his cock and he'd gotten away with it with nothing but a twinge of guilt and grief afterwards.

But then one night Ichigo had had a dream, so vivid he'd been able to remember every detail afterwards. It'd been a wet one—a scenario mirroring his first time with Renji, but with a twist. They'd both reenacted the evening, in reality being far more experienced and comfortable with each other, and Ichigo's nervous glances and unsure hands, Renji's careful touches and reassuring grins had been faked—a game of sorts.

Playing the virgin had been so arousing Ichigo had gotten stuck in one tiny moment, his dream being lucid enough for him to be able to rewind and press play over and over: the look on Renji's face once he'd been seated fully inside Ichigo, kneeling between his parted legs with his fingers digging into the back of his thighs hard enough to hurt. He'd acted so amazed, as if he'd actually never experienced anything like it before, so turned on Ichigo's cock had twitched and leaked at the sight, and he'd looked…happy. Like he could stay like that forever.

And Ichigo really had wanted that moment to last forever, had wanted Renji to keep looking at him, to just minutely shift his hips, making it perfectly clear to Ichigo how deep he was buried inside him. It had taken Ichigo what had felt like hours to move past that scene, let Renji start to move, and get swallowed up by the feeling of getting fucked.

He'd woken up moaning loudly, still shuddering and arching his back in the aftershocks of his orgasm.

After that he'd been back to seeing Renji in his mind every time he tried to masturbate. Enough time had passed for it to sting a little less, though; Ichigo had ended up integrating his loss into his fantasies. He'd jerked off imagining Renji, invisible to him, leaning against his bedroom wall, a smirk on his face as he urged Ichigo on, knowing full well he couldn't hear him.

_You're pretty when you touch yourself like that, aren't you… Bet you taste as sweet as you look, too. I mean, just look at that cock of yours. Definitely needs my mouth on it._

_But where are those fingers, baby? I know how much you love getting stretched and filled. Once you even mentioned maybe getting one of those human toys to be able to fuck yourself properly when I'm not there to take care of you. Never got around to it, huh? Maybe you should._

_For now you should suck on your fingers for me. Get them nice and wet…_

It had gotten him off in no time, every time.

It wasn't that easy anymore. He found he had trouble remembering what Renji actually sounded like, what his face looked like when he smirked. The abandonment—how _fucking hard _would it be to visit him in gigai anyways—was a wound which scab Ichigo picked at too much these days, making it bleed and sting like a motherfucker, but now on top of that the memories—the _good _parts—were starting to fade, and that stung even worse.

Ichigo wasn't crying. He was _not_ crying, those were _not_ tears, his breath _didn't_ hitch and shudder and his heart was _perfectly fine_.

He rubbed his eyes furiously and held his breath until his lungs screamed while hauling in emotion after raging emotion, rolling them up tight and tucking them back down deep inside, a procedure he'd been practicing since he was a little kid, and after several long minutes he'd stopped sobbing, his eyes swollen but dry and his breathing finally back under control.

"I'm happy," he told himself for the hundredth time. It sounded just about as convincing as the previous ones. "This is the life I wanted." He gritted his teeth. "It's _normal_. I can study in peace, get an education, a job, a place to live, a—a..." He couldn't make himself say it, could barely think it. "…kids—a family." The seams where white met blue on his bedspread creaked in protest as his hands clutched the fabric tighter. "A—and you could come visit, right? Be that crazy uncle the kids would love because you'd let them get away with shit I never would. You—" Another word and he'd start crying again.

Ichigo hung his head, stared down at his lap without blinking as if daring his vision to start blurring again. He'd sucked in his bottom lip and chewed on it some time ago, he had no idea when, and now there were raw patches tasting of iron on it. He let his tongue run over them, back and forth.

A breeze from his cracked-open window made the tiny hairs on his neck stand on end; it was as if someone had breathed on him, like an excited puff of air tickling his skin before an eager mouth dove in and marked it. He shuddered, felt his cock stir the tiniest bit. The image of Renji sitting behind him close enough to _almost_ touch, legs bracketing his, hands so close to his arms he could feel the heat from them, blazed up in his mind, so real he could taste it—so real he could _believe_ it.

His hands went to his fly again, finishing the job opening it, his fingers clumsily hooking the waistband of his boxers to push them out of the way.

"You _better_ be watching." Ichigo grabbed himself, started coaxing his cock into full hardness.

"This one's for you.

ooo


End file.
